Clean up

No, matter how careful you think you are, minor errors can creep in. They may be small, but they look big and need fixing. For example, on this ten inch mast hoop portrait of a Town Class sloop, I was particularly upset by the miscut of the line on the sail batten. You get involved and miss things.
I caught this in time to fix it.
As I finish up, my habit is to take a carving outside of the shop for a look under different lighting. So I took this one outside to the natural daylight, shifted its position to look at it from different angles, and then splashed it with some mineral spirits. That final bit is something that I almost always do while carving cherry. It gives me a clue about what the piece will look like varnished and makes the fine lines pop out. Notably, on cherry, it doesn’t raise the grain much.
I corrected the errors in carving, started the varnishing cycle, and then fit the finished portrait into the mast hoop. These mast hoop portraits range from ten inches in diameter to about sixteen inches ( internal diameter), and are among my favorite things to carve.